“What is consciousness” is not a single question, but a whole set of
questions. Here are just a few:

Why do we experience certain sensations not as information,
but as qualities? Why, for example, do we experience a
wavelength of light as blue, rather than as a colorless piece of
data?

How do we manage to experience things in the absence of
sensations, such as in imagination and dreams?

Why do our experience of things cohere as things, rather than
as a distribution of points? Why, for example, do we see
the world as we do, rather than as something like a pointillist
painting?

And why do our experiences seem connected over time, rather
than as discrete events? Why do we hear a melody, and not
a series of notes?

How do things develop meaning? Why do they develop a
coherence in the sense that we respond to them in a purposive
fashion?

Why do we experience ourselves as selves? How do we find
a coherence that separates us from other aspects of our
experiencing?

Where do we get the sense of self as subject or ego? Why
doesn’t the information simply pass through us, as we assume it
does in machines or very primitive creatures?

The list could go on, and each question analyzed into more detailed
questions, but this is more than enough to start with. The
purpose of this chapter is to develop a coherent set of general
answers to these questions from a naturalistic perspective.

Qualities

Science, in order to go beyond the subjective, is forced to deal
with reality via measurement. If I have a meter stick and you have a
meter stick, our judgements of some event are more likely to be
“objective.” And so we have measured everything in sight and claimed
understanding. What is “blue?” It is a wavelength of light, in
the neighborhood of 475 nm (nanometers, Greek for "little tiny baby
meters").

The error we commonly make is to believe that the measurement explains the quality. Instead,
the wavelength is actually no more than a measurement of the
quality. Blue is first, then we describe the blue as having a
characteristic: If approached in a certain way (the
measurement), it appears to involve light waves that measure 475
nm. 475 nm is an abstraction from the quality of blue and does
not exhaust the phenomenon.

To borrow one of J. J. Gibson’s (1979) famous phrases, the
experiential quality we call blue is “in the light.” There is no
need to wonder how we turn wavelengths into blue. And, again
following Gibson, there is no need to wonder how we “bind” the
“dots” of sensory information together in time and space: We are
only perceiving what is, in fact, already there for us, in the
light, the sound, the touch, and so on. Perceptual
consciousness is external to us, and a better way to approach it is
to say that we are "open" to certain real qualities (and, of course,
closed to many more).

I like to think of the world is composed of nothing but qualities
- colors, sounds, temperatures, shapes, textures, movements,
images, feelings, and so on, all of them simply there, ready for
someone to perceive.

Unlike materialists, I would not reduce these qualities to atoms
or energies or anything “physical”. To me, these atoms and such
are just explanatory devices, good for helping us to predict and
control, especially when we can’t see what’s going on. But
they are nothing without the qualities they refer to.

However, when a tree falls in the forest, I'm certain that the
sound happens, whether there is someone there to hear it or
not. Unlike philosophers like Bishop Berkeley, I don’t think
that all of these qualities require the presence of a mind (even
God's) to exist; some do, but others don’t. Further, I
believe there are plenty of qualities - an infinity of them,
perhaps - that we do not and cannot perceive at all. Some
animals, for example, can hear sounds and see colors we
cannot. These sounds and colors are every bit as real and
rich as a high C or blue-green. Neither does it require that there
be representations of things "in" our minds or brains: There
are no "blue" neural firings or "C major" neurotransmitters. Nor
are there any mysterious entities such as "qualia" in our
heads.

Although the question of how or why we experience qualities is
sometimes referred to as the “hard problem” of consciousness studies
(Chalmers, 1995), it is only difficult if one insists on taking a
strong materialistic approach. Although materialism is usually
associated with empirical science, the existence of matter is in
fact not empirically demonstrable. As Bishop Berkeley (1710)
and later David Hume (1748) and others argued so well, we never
“see” matter; we only experience various forms and qualities which,
due to their consistency, we choose to label matter. We then take a giant leap to
the idea that this matter is fundamental to everything else.

Nevertheless, we call some of these qualities “matter” and some
we call "mind." "Matter" includes the ones that emphasize form,
resistance, and especially separateness from mind. The ones
we call “mind” include those qualities that are more elusive, more
personal, harder to share. Both are real, neither is superior in
some way. There are as well qualities of time, space,
number, causality, value, and so on, that are hard to place in
either category.

I do think that mental qualities came into existence later in the
course of the universe’s history than material qualities. I
believe they emerged from the special organizations of matter we
call "life" - and especially "brain". But saying that doesn’t
dismiss the reality of mental qualities, anymore than water is
less watery for being made of hydrogen and oxygen.

The
senses

It is a mistake, of course, to view consciousness as a thing
inhabiting a place. Consciousness is a process, a verb, if you like,
and an active and transitive one at that. It is better to say
something like “I ‘touch’ the world,” rather than “the world is in
my consciousness.” So let us take touch as the archetypal
sense, and take shape as the archetypal quality. Then let us define
form as a set of structural relationships extended over time and
space - i.e. a Gestalt

Feeling (and seeing) shapes is the most “primary” (in Galileo's
sense) of experiences. Curvature, angularity, circularity,
rectilinearly.... Why do we have fewer epistemological
problems with these than with other qualities? Because they
can be measured, recorded, and reconstructed... and then
experienced by someone else. The Gestalt or form is maintained,
even if the form has to be “deconstructed” and
“reconstructed.” Forms are communicable. I would like to
suggest that "secondary" qualities, even flavors and colors, can
be understood in the same fashion - they are just less
communicable.

Look at taste and smell: These primitive senses allow us to
experience the shapes of certain molecules. Could we say that
sweet is round? Bitter jagged? Are pungent odors
hairy? Florals soft? These are just similes, but they
suggest a very useful way of conceiving of flavors and scents.

Or hearing: Hair cells “touch” the physical vibrations
conducted through air, bone, membranes, and fluids, vibrations
which maintain their forms through all these changes. Rhythm
is very "primary" - a form over time. Is a high C really
that different from a rhythm? Is a C major chord? I
recall as a kid making rulers vibrate on the edge of my school
desk: I liked hearing the rhythmical tapping of wood on wood
and the "overtones" at various pitches! We only need to
remember that forms can be temporal as well as spatial to admit
hearing into the class of primary senses.

And colors: The cones in our retinas “touch” the light
waves. Try some "synesthetic" analogies on for size:
The sound of blue as electromagnetic vibrations; The taste of
blue, the light waves experienced like the shapes of molecules are
experienced in taste and smell; Or the shape of blue in analogy to
the shapes of things we touch -- blue's "roundness" or
"angularity"....

Again, it is the communicability of shapes that leads us to view
them as somehow more "primary" than tastes, scents, sounds, and
colors. And, although some of these qualities remain
difficult to communicate, we can indeed communicate a high C or a
C major chord (deconstructing and reconstructing the Gestalts)
quite easily, with our voices or our instruments. The
difficulty is a practical one, not a philosophical one.

Desire

As long as we are alive, we have needs. It is a part of our
nature as human beings that we desire to survive, even when some
of us sometimes choose not to. We don't just want to survive in a
physical sense, either: We want to survive in terms of our
identity, our self. This desire makes our experiences of
the world meaningful. Without it, the qualities of the world
merely pass through us, like information through a computer.

So, consciousness requires that we be needy, and being needy
requires that we have a sense of self. One aspect of self is the
simple awareness of our body. When I look out at the world, I also
see my body stretching out under my nose. I can look at my feet
and my hands and, with a mirror, my entire physical being. But
another aspect of self - perhaps even more important - is the
accumulated layers of past experiences that I have piled up inside
my mind - my memories, my habits, my upbringing, my culture, my
unique experiences. These things color my experience as much as
the color of my glasses.

Another aspect of consciousness is that we are moving in time, that
is, we perceive the direction in time that the events of the world
flows. There is a sense that each moment leads to a future moment,
which is in part actually present in each moment. The past,
especially the immediate past of seconds or minutes before, is also
somewhat present. The now has a certain thickness to it; it is never
truly only the present moment, but rather a minute or two thick.

We take advantage of this by using our past experiences - even the
events of the past moment - to anticipate possible futures -
especially the events of the next moment. As we listen to someone
speak, for example, we use the previous sentence and our experiences
with language to anticipate the next one. We even use each word and
sound to anticipate the next word or sound. If someone changes the
subject suddenly, or uses the wrong word or mispronounces it, we are
surprised, at least for a moment, until we manage to reorient our
anticipations through action or learning.

Being able to anticipate means we can also anticipate threats to our
survival or to our selves more generally, which in turn affects the
actions we take in regard to those threats. We respond to some
threats automatically, in ways that were laid down by evolution over
millions of years. We have a variety of instincts that
function this way.

We also come to realize that it serves us well to seek not only our
own immediate survival, but to learn ways to make survival easier in
the future. We want to improve ourselves. This is what young animals
and humans do when they play: They are trying things out - in
relative safety - that may be handy in the future. This desire to
better ourselves is commonly called actualization.

Feelings

As a desiring being, I cannot be indifferent to the world. I
relate to it passionately. Interactions which prevent my
actualization I experience negatively, as pain and distress. Those
which promote my actualization I experience positively, as
pleasure and delight. The intensity of the feeling is the measure
of how relevant or meaningful the interaction is for me.

My understanding of the world and myself is continually tested
through my anticipations and actions. When my understanding
is inadequate, I feel distress, and I attempt to repair
the inadequacy through further anticipation and action. As
these responses return me to adequate understanding, I feel delight.

Physical pain and pleasure are cyclical breakdowns and
restorations of integrity that mimic distress and delight. They do
not in themselves improve understanding, but they can and do
reinforce the impact of otherwise distressful or delightful
events. Pain and pleasure are forms of distress and delight
developed through evolution rather than through learning.

Ironically, pain and distress are what we feel when our neediness
is most evident and our awareness brightest. Pleasure and delight
are what we feel as we move towards unconsciousness! When
there are no problems or problems-being-solved, there is
no emotion. Only in unconsciousness is the differentiation of self
and world obliterated and we are, for a while, truly at peace. But
then, we aren’t able to enjoy it! When there is no emotion,
there is no consciousness.

Our capacity for anticipation permits certain emotions that are
somewhat detached from the immediate situation. Anxiety, for
example, is the distressful anticipation of distress. We
also experience the delightful anticipation of delight, which we
could call hope or eagerness, depending on the details.
Anger is distress combined with the expectation that the distress
may be relieved by action. Sadness is distress that
acknowledges the need for continued efforts at improving
myself. And so on.

Perspectives

A conscious entity can only be conscious of some small portion of
total reality. It is limited by its position in space, by the
variety of its sense organs, by the sensitivity of those organs,
by its access to its own processes, and more besides. In other
words, each person has his or her own perspective on and
understanding of the world.

One consequence of this perspectivity is that the
contrast between objectivity and subjectivity is no longer
terribly meaningful: All you can ever have is a perspective, and
although some perspectives are no doubt better than others - I
prefer to be knowledgeable rather than ignorant, and sane rather
than insane, for example - none qualifies as the "ultimate"
perspective.

If you want to understand the entirety of reality, you will need
to add all possible perspectives together. This is, of course,
impossible, so we can only do our best to understand reality. And
in order to move towards understanding, we must have a great
respect for the variety of perspectives we come across, because
each can contribute to our understanding of the whole.

What is meaningful for you may not be meaningful for me. Yet both of
our perspectives refer to the same reality. We are therefore
ultimately capable of understanding each other.